lately these days i haven't had the patience or interest even though i really do love roleplaying. i think i have a reason why.

this is going to sound pretty grossly elitist, but honestly there's a point at which skill levels in writing and character development differ to greatly it's hard to enjoy a roleplay. i get that people are learning and improving, which is fantastic, but i'm also trying to enjoy myself, so like... there's some baseline standard i have to put down in order to have fun.

that being said, i've always had trouble turning people down, so i find myself in the situation of losing interest really early on. thus my recent experience with accepting rps has been pretty disappointing-- and i know where to find roleplayers that match my needs, but there's another issue entirely with them. i dunno why, but i guess i get anxious when rping with people of or above my skill level? even though i honestly believe i'm a pretty damn good writer and i really don't have anything to worry about.

i guess it might have something to do with that really gross elitist attitude some advanced lit/novella roleplayers have. like, i generally write somewhere between 200-1000+ words per post, which is kind of what i consider average. it baffles me when i see posts that are consistently 2-5k+ because i haven't even been able to sustain my personal work past 7k.

i know post length shouldn't matter because roleplay is supposed to be for fun, but as a writer i can't help but feel competitive.

not to mention that rping with strangers and going through the whole meeting and greeting process is pretty exhausting. so these days, i've been finding writing solo easier and more rewarding. but man, i really do miss rping. i have friends who i love rping with, but i dunno. my favorite rp partner never seems interested these days.

i dunno, i think i might be ready to give up rping as one of my main hobbies. might still do it on occasion, but it might be time to put down the dog so to say.

do you guys rp? what are your best/worst experiences?

I totally know what you mean, and it isn't elitist as much as it is realistic. <__<

I had one forum I used to do roleplay on, but it shut down...heck, it might have been a decade ago. Yikes. Then I attempted a livejournal RP community but it was super clique-like and didn't have any magic in it so I got fed up with it fairly quickly. One person from there I continued on with for another year or two, but eventually I found myself avoiding logging on to the internet because she was always there and always wanted to RP and sometimes I need to be on the computer and do work? You know. It would have been easier if it was not a realtime RP.

I do have one realtime RP person I've played with for a decade and we've created hundreds of characters together and built multiple full-scale realms and species. But she's easier to RP with because she isn't online 24/7. Also...that's a lot of characters/world building.

I've sort of wanted to get back into forum RP, but I have no idea where to even begin looking for that these days. I do a lot of solo writing, though, so it's not like I'm not getting my creative fix. Sometimes it's nice to have someone to talk to, though.

My characters are lonely.

...that sounded creepier than I anticipated.

i'm honestly surprised lj rps are even still alive these days. i did a few for a while but i have commitment issues. even the private forum i used to reg on, i never was THAT regular of a user, you know?

as far as forum rping goes, there's rpnation and iwakuroleplay which are pretty decent. i think i'm looking for a deeper rpg experience though, like the forums with a preset world and in-game systems and all that? i actually have no idea what you call those, but i'd been on one just like that from 2011 until it closed a few years ago. i met some of the best people there.

but yeah, honestly i wish i could just let myself enjoy casual roleplay without feeling weirdly self conscious about it, but a good number of less experienced rpers tend to conflate quality with length, which... is problematic? LOL

speaking of which, i was on some chat site once and some random person pmed me bragging to me that they did novella rp, because i'd written on my profile that i did multipara. like, that was all they said. "you do multipara? ha, i do novella rp"

like... what? are you... insecure? is everything okay dude???

then just recently i met another rper who asked to roleplay with me and was telling me how they love to try and write a LOT/more than their partner and i was like uhhhh. okay. they said some things that really ticked me off to be honest, like after i admitted that i get competitive too when it comes to post length, they were all like "I SEE YOU WANTING TO BE SUPERIOR BRO YOU CANT HIDE IT" and i was like... okay... that's... kind of an asshole thing to say.

i mean, of course deep down no one wants to be "worse" but i spent literally 8 paragraphs explaining how this kind of competitive behavior is not only toxic but also just, not fun and detrimental to the purpose of rping. i mean, if you have two people who enjoy being competitive, sure, that's fine, but like if you put your self worth in your writing (like me and the person i was talking to) then it's really a bad idea.

so getting that comment was kind of like... did you read anything i just said? and it was right after this person was getting upset because i somehow insinuated i thought they were bad at rping- which i said nothing of the sort.

orz after that i kind of just ditched because i don't want to deal with that kind of bull when i'm trying to relax and have fun with writing

rip, i went off on a tangent so don't feel pressured to reply to all that.

Woah, that is super weird to me, the whole XTREME length thing. Paragraphs make sense to me, but novellas? Sheez. I mean, seriously, I don't time to read that. (That and half the time it's the person rattling on and on forever about feels and their traumatic past and whatever. I do not care. We were in a gunfight. Why are you pining in the middle of a gunfight? There is a time and place for introspection and a gunfight is not it, damn it.)

Which reminds me of another problem I usually ended up having--not all characters are nice, considerate people. I am playing a dude who's a jerk. He gives zero cares about your character's feelings. I'm fine with him taking blowback for that, but every single time people got mad at ME for being insensitive instead of limiting it to the RP.

I'm like, dude, you were the one who wanted to play a gritty apocalyptic RP. The people in it are not going to all be saints. Or change after being scolded once.

I am the least competitive person in the universe. So much so that it really makes playing things with me not fun sometimes. XD

yeahh, it's really like... i think it's fine to do if you're committed, but i really don't like how elitist the novella rp community is... plus, they seem to mostly roleplay these ... generic feeling settings that are almost always kind of stereotypical western/european high fantasy, which... i have some gripes with? and i guess just the impression i get from those types of rpers in general.

also LOL i try not to roleplay with people who'd think mean character = mean person. i've got a lot of asshole characters and so do my friends- thank god i actually never had that issue before. i guess because i specifically state that i love suffering and drama in my roleplays, so i just... you know. load that on. bad things are going to happen in my roleplays and some of those might be because of my character- that should be what people expect.

oh man though, i really hate it when rpers constantly play really shy characters and they make no effort to get our ocs to interact. like, you can have a shy character, yes, but you as a writer have the ability to force them into situations where our characters HAVE to interact. interacting is the entire point of rp?

rubs my head in confusion ???

The worst part is when someone plays one of those shy characters who absolutely refuse to interact with others and then get all annoyed and think people are ignoring them. Gah!

I don't RP much myself anymore
Prolly coz over on Gaia their posts got so obnoxiously busy, you couldn't find the actual post, much less read it, and that is even worse than getting a novel for a post

yeah, gaia rp is pretty conflated with nonsense. while a part of me enjoys the aesthetic, it's also pretty hard to read lmao. coding an rp post seems like a pain...

I consider myself a fairly elitist rper given that I've been rping for fourteen years now? I have a bachelor's degree in playwrighting (which is not rping but it gives me a standard to be selective by). I rped on the forums for a while but I was very selective to begin with. I now mostly rp in MMOs because I can create my characters, and find good, rping guilds that have already been selective for me.

That said, I don't rp with people who can't capitalize letters that are supposed to be capitalized or use proper punctuation. Post length rarely matters to me but you have to give me something to work off of. Recently I rped with someone (for a second time after meeting them in my newest mmo, BDO) and I was doing all the talking. I kept asking their character questions and they kept answering, but weren't asking me any in return so it felt very one sided. Generally with mmo rp you find that different groups have different rp styles and it's easy to move between them or just stay with a group you prefer the style of.

Forum rp, in my experience, is garbage, 90% of the time. MMO rp, you have people dedicated to a storytelling craft that want to expand their world with you in a mature and intelligent way, generally. Of course it's not perfect but it's much easier to avoid a random character that dropped by the tea shop than it is someone you thought was going to be great who you created an entire story with, only to be stuck with them when the slack off.

ooh, 14 yrs? i've been doing it for around 10 now i think? i guess, if you don't consider how on/off my rping habits are.

ahaha, my conversational punctuation/grammar is really lazy. i promise i know how to actually write.

mmo rps have always sounded interesting but given the technological requirements, i never got a chance to get into it when i was younger. now i'm just not in the habit. it sounds like fun, but at the same time i'm not sure why i'm hesitant on trying it out. i guess i'm just too tired to commit to anything these days? what with real life going on and all that- else i would have probably already committed to another forum.

also, i think general forum roleplays are pretty hit or miss, but private forums tend to be better- like the ones with rpg-like systems in place, essentially making them text-based mmos. i really enjoy that kind of in-depth character creation structure as well.